1) The entire low level experience - which could have been great with the new quests - is spoiled by insanely powerful heritage gear. It ruins dungeons, which are already too easy by turning them into a pathetic zergfest, and destroys PvP by allowing 30% of the players to 3shot the other 70%.

2) Gear inflation in PvP is still ridiculous. S(n+1)-geared people nomatch S(n)-geared people, turning random BGs into "who-has-the-highest-amount-of-undergeared-gets-camped", and forcing people who haven't played all previous seasons of the expansion to spend months getting raped in BGs / Arenas before they can actually start playing the game.

3) World PvP has been low for quite a while, it still existed though when there were Dungeon Stones and people actually had to move to some places to do stuff. Now, it's dead, you consume the content from Orgri/SW with your bottom on your dragon, flying around like an idiot with hundreds of shiny mounts around doing the same thing.

4) There is no RvR. Tol Barad is just another BG, you get TP'd to it and it has a limited duration. The alliance/horde conflict, which is quite great through low levels zones, means nothing in end-game content. BGs are more like some kind of FPS, you're blue team or red team but you don't give a crap. Anyway, you can just switch factions for a few dollars.

5) The *dungeon finder* farmfest. It boggles my mind how someone who is supposed to get paid may have believed that people would actually enjoy that stuff. Sitting on your mount in Stormwind, the fastest - the only viable - way of gearing up is rushing a hundred times through heroics and raids that are so easy that only 3/5 or 15/25 people could do it without an issue. And you get the best gear available.I was really shocked when I discovered the LFR tools, only a few days ago. I played as a healer, and not only were the fights insanely boring, with almost nothing to heal, but they were also crazy long. It felt like bringing down some fat passive NPC with 100000000 HP and then looting it.

6) The stupidity of PvE progression. Instead of simply leaving the great vanilla/TBC system, where you dinged 70, then had to go through normal to get access to heroics, then heroics to get enough gear for raids, then Kara, then T4, then T5, then T6 etc. and where you felt like you had a huge path ahead of you, and the content felt so immensely rich, they decided it would be a smart move to flush all previous content down the drain every new patch.I skipped Firelands, so I'll never get to see it. I didn't do all BWD/BoT, I'll never get to do it. Oh of course, I can zerg through it with ilvl410-geared guys who will oneshot trashmobs. But there's already LFR for that kind of stuff.The "we want everyone to see the whole content" is the stupidest thing I've heard from a video game company in a while. Does Bethesda rush-teleport me into every single god damn cavern in Skyrim because if they don't I might not take the time to clean them all ?I wonder if there is like 1 madman who has a prominent position in their dev teams and has all these dumb ideas, or if they actually - as a whole - are bad enough at their jobs to think it's going to work.

7) Last but not least, the uniformization (does that word even exist in english ? Might be.).Classes, races, factions, professions...Everything is being mirrored to everything. You no longer need a priest for that buff, or a hunter for that debuff. 3 classes can do the same stuff. Choices are cosmetic, at the end of the day you won't need to have the balanced groups of specs / classes you needed back in the old days, which is for me the essence of an MMORPG.

1) The entire low level experience - which could have been great with the new quests - is spoiled by insanely powerful heritage gear. It ruins dungeons, which are already too easy by turning them into a pathetic zergfest, and destroys PvP by allowing 30% of the players to 3shot the other 70%.

As people point out regularly, heirloom gear is entirely optional. You have to put time and effort into purchasing it. It’s intended to make things a little quicker for players who have already seen end game on at least one character and would like a quicker levelling experience, allowing them to see end game on another character a little sooner.

Not everyone has heirlooms; many low level dungeon groups have some players without them. If you’d like more of a challenge in instances, try running ones that are aimed at slightly higher levels than your character, or make groups with less than 5 members perhaps. For the ultimate test, why not try soloing them?

Low-level PvP is challenging due to several factors. At the end of the day, heirlooms are equivalent to blue quality items. In many situations, it’s possible to find or craft similar non-heirloom gear, although admittedly it’s harder to do so. But having heirlooms available to you is a plus-side of having an end-game character help your low level one, something that’s always been a benefit.

2) Gear inflation in PvP is still ridiculous. S(n+1)-geared people nomatch S(n)-geared people, turning random BGs into "who-has-the-highest-amount-of-undergeared-gets-camped", and forcing people who haven't played all previous seasons of the expansion to spend months getting raped in BGs / Arenas before they can actually start playing the game.

There have been a number of changes to make it easier for people to jump into PvP quicker and gear up faster, while at the same time not invalidating the efforts of people who have put lots of work into getting the best gear. But ultimately, PvP is what you make it, and good gear is not a replacement for skill. Those who win at PvP were in blues too at some stage, they worked at gearing up just like everyone else. Try teaming up with friends, getting organised and focusing on strategies to make the path easier.

3) World PvP has been low for quite a while, it still existed though when there were Dungeon Stones and people actually had to move to some places to do stuff. Now, it's dead, you consume the content from Orgri/SW with your bottom on your dragon, flying around like an idiot with hundreds of shiny mounts around doing the same thing.

One of our aims in Mists is to get people back out into the world again. We’ve heard from players time and time again that the world outside the city gates feels empty and that’s another reason we’re implementing the cross-realm zones. In Mists, you’ll see more players out and about in the world when you’re travelling from A to B — which you should be doing more often thanks to some of the new features in the expansion.

4) There is no RvR. Tol Barad is just another BG, you get TP'd to it and it has a limited duration. The alliance/horde conflict, which is quite great through low levels zones, means nothing in end-game content. BGs are more like some kind of FPS, you're blue team or red team but you don't give a crap. Anyway, you can just switch factions for a few dollars.

The war between the Alliance and the Horde is also something we’re getting back to in Mists. For instance if the Horde were, say, planning something nasty for Theramore, the Alliance may want to do something about that. If I were you, I’d be sharpening my weapons. Things are about to heat up.

5) The *dungeon finder* farmfest. It boggles my mind how someone who is supposed to get paid may have believed that people would actually enjoy that stuff. Sitting on your mount in Stormwind, the fastest - the only viable - way of gearing up is rushing a hundred times through heroics and raids that are so easy that only 3/5 or 15/25 people could do it without an issue. And you get the best gear available.I was really shocked when I discovered the LFR tools, only a few days ago. I played as a healer, and not only were the fights insanely boring, with almost nothing to heal, but they were also crazy long. It felt like bringing down some fat passive NPC with 100000000 HP and then looting it.

Actually, LFD and LFR have been very popular tools. When time is short, being able to queue for a quick dungeon while going about other things such as gathering or doing daily quests is very useful. Again, it’s not mandatory and you’re still able to manually form groups with friends, even cross-realm now.

In regards to the difficulty level of encounters, well we’re at the end of an expansion and most people have had ample time to gear up well past the entry level gear requirements for these instances, of course it’s going to seem easier now if you have people in the group with such high-end gear.

6) The stupidity of PvE progression. Instead of simply leaving the great vanilla/TBC system, where you dinged 70, then had to go through normal to get access to heroics, then heroics to get enough gear for raids, then Kara, then T4, then T5, then T6 etc. and where you felt like you had a huge path ahead of you, and the content felt so immensely rich, they decided it would be a smart move to flush all previous content down the drain every new patch.I skipped Firelands, so I'll never get to see it. I didn't do all BWD/BoT, I'll never get to do it. Oh of course, I can zerg through it with ilvl410-geared guys who will oneshot trashmobs. But there's already LFR for that kind of stuff.The "we want everyone to see the whole content" is the stupidest thing I've heard from a video game company in a while. Does Bethesda rush-teleport me into every single god damn cavern in Skyrim because if they don't I might not take the time to clean them all ?I wonder if there is like 1 madman who has a prominent position in their dev teams and has all these dumb ideas, or if they actually - as a whole - are bad enough at their jobs to think it's going to work.

The old way of progression meant the majority of players never got to see the last boss in an expansion, and we wanted to change that. Not only is it counter-productive for us to put out these exciting, epic encounters that only a fraction of the players will ever see while they’re current, it also leaves many players with a feeling that they missed out on the end-game.

The system we have right now means that those who are at the cutting edge of raiding will still get to progress through all the raids in the order they become available, they’ll have the best gear before anyone else, and all the other fun things that come with being a hard core player. Anyone, like yourself, who skips content because perhaps they joined the game later or didn’t have the time required for this kind of progression doesn’t have to do all the encounters if they don’t want to — but the option is definitely still there if they want to see the story. It totally depends on how you want to play the game. This way, people aren’t forced to grind through non-current content (and often fail to make it to the end before the next expansion) to be able to see the end of the game.

Also, comparing two completely different types of games is bad, please don’t.

7) Last but not least, the uniformization (does that word even exist in english ? Might be.).Classes, races, factions, professions...Everything is being mirrored to everything. You no longer need a priest for that buff, or a hunter for that debuff. 3 classes can do the same stuff. Choices are cosmetic, at the end of the day you won't need to have the balanced groups of specs / classes you needed back in the old days, which is for me the essence of an MMORPG.

“Back in the old days”, if you played a Paladin, you were pretty much forced to heal in raids because other classes did DPS and Tanking better. Obviously lots of players were miffed about that sort of thing. We made changes over time to make other specs for each class more viable for not only raiding, but for other aspects of the game.

Having said that, the developers actively work hard to make sure we don’t see all classes ending up exactly the same, while trying to ensure different specs and classes are valuable in their own right, each having something to add to a group and making sure one character’s ability is not vastly more useful or overpowered than someone else’s.

1: If you're in LFD and you're not in heirlooms. You run the risk of being called a "noob" anyway (even if you are genuinely new to the game and of course cannot get heirlooms).

2: If you join one much higher than your level as you suggest, and are not in heirlooms. That categorically will not work. Because all the other members will be higher level AND in heirlooms. They will think you're even more of a "noob" for joining such a high level instance in "noob" gear (as I'm sure they'll say).

I actually play low levels a lot because I enjoy levelling. Personally, I can honestly say that I regularly see low level players in greens and blues during instances, and I don't think I have ever seen someone picked on purely for not having heirlooms.

If everyone is getting on with the instance and there are no huge problems, surely it's unlikely others will start inspecting people and picking fault with their lack of looms?

But having heirlooms available to you is a plus-side of having an end-game character help your low level one, something that’s always been a benefit

You completely missed the point. It's not about the choice you have about whether you have heirlooms or not. It's that everybody else does have them, and the enemy won't care if you do. There's no point in entering a battleground in your quest greens when you can't even pop a heirloomed priest's bubble. Again, battlegrounds are a team versus another team. You may have a point in dungeons, because it's a cooperative effort. Battlegrounds, on the other hand, are competitive. You don't get carried by helpful teammates, you get a trip to the graveyard. Being a dead weight on your team is really frustrating.

And I think you missed my point too — that there have always been players with better gear, having an 'advantage' over their opponents in that regard, heirlooms aren't the only way to have it.

If you go into a BG in greens, you can only expect to get your proverbial rear handed back to you on a plate if you go up against an equally skilled player in blues. Those who go out of their way to gear well for BGs and are skilled will generally do better than undergeared players of a similar skill, obviously. Before looms, players searched for good twink gear to give the same effect.

Nope, I never made that out. As I said in my original post, low-level PvP is challenging due to several factors, and heirlooms are definitely one of them.

With the relatively easy availability of heirlooms as you highlighted, opposed to the item hunt for twinks, these days you have to going into low level BGs knowing that these people will be there. Just as you have to go into level 85 BGs in your crafted blue PvP set when you're just starting out, knowing there'll be organised teams on voice chat with the best Arena gear waiting for you.

Sure it's tough going up against this at first, but as you get better and gear up, the satisfaction you get when the tables start to turn is worth it IMO.

I'm not dismissing your feelings on this by the way, and please do continue putting your points forward. I'm just saying I think that this situation has always been there in some shape or form.

What really amazes me is the high amount of posts of blizzard in this post. Simply saying 'you're wrong, WoW is fun, you're just playing it wrong'.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm offering another viewpoint, often my own personal one, as a player of WoW myself. It's unfortunate that, just because my text is blue, some people immediately dismiss my opinion as biased. Anyway, threads like this are often goldmines for some excellent feedback, providing some great points on how we might think about steering things for the better. I've seen several great arguments already.

Edit: On that note, if people can try to stay on the topics raised in the original post, we'd really appreciate it.

You compare heirloom characters to twinks. As you know, the decision Blizzard made about Twinks was made "to get them out of regular BGs"... so, if one of them was taken out "for the greater good"...why isn't the other group? Double standards much?

Players that elected to turn off XP gain purely to excel in PvP were moved to their own BGs, yes. I don't think you can throw in players in heirlooms though. They level up alongside everyone else in the regular BGs, so they also have a point where they find themselves at the lower end of a bracket and perhaps aren't going to do so well against players of a higher level. I'm not saying they'll be trashed by people in greens, refer to my earlier comment about gearing up for BGs, but if they meet people in similar gear, they won't have an easy time.

Are you OK with the fact that new players, or old players in new servers, will have a permanent and significant gear disadvantage against heirloomed players? I will remind you that gear is a very important factor in how much you contribute to your team (and in consequence, the fun you have), perhaps even more than skill due to class imbalance.

But it's likely that, on average, the team you face will have a similar number of people in heirlooms, blues and/or greens isn't it? In which case, your team has an equal chance of winning regardless.

But, the same "loomed" players (on both sides) will be bashing the normal geared players (on both sides) on the head every time you get a few yards into the front line. Over and over again.

Many players will be thinking they're playing the game wrong. Never realising they never stood a chance against such gear mismatch.

Maybe "many players" is a bit of an overstatement. We all know the feeling of stepping into PvP for the first time and meeting a brick wall of opposition. It didn't stop people (me) from playing though. I think we tend to figure out that our opponents are more seasoned, better equipped players than we are, and to maybe put some research into improving first before throwing in the towel.

I'm fine with the existance of LFR and LFD, however, I'm not fine with the fact that you have more incentives to do those than to do the dungeons the old fashioned way.

At the very least you could make it so that if you give the time to run to the dungeon with a group of ppl you invited you would get the same reward in terms of valor, justice, gold and goodie bags as those who chose to use the tool to teleport into them.

The ones using the LFD tool would still have access to faster dungeons (since they have the random dungeon buff, as well as not needing to search for members) and those who wanted to do it the other way would still feel like they are not loosing up on rewards.

You don't need to make one better than the other in terms of rewards, just make them equal. (Although i wouldn't mind if you got an extra 10% valor/justice/gold if you went into a dungeon without using the LFD tool, not too much so it wouldn't feel mandatory)

Of course we do. Blizzard blues are a charade. They never post anything that's actually useful, and when they do, it's to defend random 2/3 casuals posting in a thread because they want to keep them subscribed. Don't say retarded stuff like that.

So we only post "to defend random 2/3 casuals" to "keep them subscribed" at the cost of annoying everyone else in the thread who then presumably won't continue to subscribe? Hmm... There's a flaw in that logic.

i agree about the loomies part . my opinion is that they shouldnt exist for pvp ; for pve there great , nothing wrong with ghetting through the content easier and faster . For pvp is a whole new case . New players are in disavantage and its not fair . Lets face it random rbgs are a whole lot more about personal satisfaction team play . No one has any satisfaction if you team wins but you get owned by the oposing team .

J/k, but there is a point in there. Don't refute worries now with content that's not out and has to be bought please.

It was never my intent to refute worries, so my apologies if it came across like that. I was merely trying to acknowledge said worries and reassure that we are trying to address the concerns people have currently in regards to PvP, and world-PvP in particular.

I hardly think it will be that long, but we shall see ;-)

With all due respect, we're going on Q3 of a year now. So unless MoP launches in 3 months, I do think we'll be going on a year.

I think there may be a misunderstanding at play here, as what I meant to say was that I hardly think it will take that long from now until Mists of Pandaria will be released. If you look at the time that has passed since the latest content patch, then of course we are looking at a longer time interval.

But his point was no content, and again you tell him to buy a new game. Somehow this rubs me a tad the wrong way. We're paying now too.

I get what the point is, and I acknowledge it. I am also perfectly aware that it is a point shared by several of you guys :-)

Also I am not telling anyone to buy anything if they do not want to, I'm telling people that we are trying to address PvP concerns in the new expansion we are working on. Once the expansion is released, some of the new PvP systems and content will be accessible to everyone regardless if they purchase the expansion or not, but it is no secret that you will need the expansion if you want access to all of the new content. This by the way is no different from how new systems and content have been introduced with previous expansions, and yet there are still plenty of people who play the game without some or even any of the expansions.